Here, in Sydney, Au, my phone number used to be 6 digits. Most of my friends in the same area had 7 digits at this time, I am not sure why we were so special. Then about 1988 we moved on to the standard (at the time) 7 digits. They simply made us put a 9 between the first and second original digits. Then a few years ago the whole country moved to 8 digit phone numbers, but in doing so, they removed most of the area codes. I believe there are now only 7 area codes for the entire country. One for each state.
My boss at the time of the change, lived in area code 046, and his number was 555-555. They simply changed his number to 4655-5555. If you needed an example
In Switzerland, from 1970 to about 1990, phone numbers varied in length from 5 to 7 digits (with a 3-digit area code) until they wear all standardized to seven digits.
Buffalo, New York was supposedly one of the last major cities in the United States to transition from six digit to seven digit telephone numbers. Growing up, the early 1960s-era black Western Electric rental dial phone had a New York Bell printed label with a six digit variant of our phone number at the time, reading “AREA CODE 716 / TF-9796”
I believe that up until the mid-1990s, in El Paso, Texas, it was possible to dial six digit numbers Juarez numbers directly, without prefixes or the Mexico country code. El Paso numbers had seven digits, and the numbering system was coordinated so two digit exchanges in Juarez were different than the first two digits of any El Paso number.
In some metropolitan areas that span two states, until recently it was often possible to dial phone numbers in the other area code without using that area code. A call from Kansas City, Missouri across the street to Prairie Village, Kansas just took seven digits.
Folks in New York City seemed to hold on to alphanumeric numbers for a long time. On the NYC cable channels, many local ads announced numbers like “212-Murray Hill-3-4573,” even into the late 1980s.
I know people with 3-digit-numbers. My Girlfriend has 4-digit number, my parents have 5 and I have a 6-digit number. All of us living in the same area (with the same area code).
During the 1940s, we had to go through the operator to place any call at all. IIRC, around 1950 we went to rotary dial phones and everyone had a four digit number. Ours was 4941. Soon thereafter, we moved to Dallas and I had to learn six digit numbers.
The name of the song is actually “Pennsylvania 6-5000” – a full seven digits. And, today, it’s still the number of the Hotel Pennsylvania accross the street from Penn Station in NYC.
I had some friends who lived in a very small village here in the UK who, until sometime around the late eighties/early nineties had a three digit number - of course there was an area code to reach it from outside, but you could call locally with just the 3 digit numbers.
(I should mention that numbers in most other areas were 5 or 6 digits, plus an area code.
There used to be local and national area codes too; to reach a Southampton number from a nearby town, you merely needed to prefix it with 9 - to get the same number from further afield, you’d have to use 0703.
